


She Remembered

by Anastasie Elise (IzzyBells)



Series: These Vampires Are Technically Antiques [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Vampire Turning, Vampires, vampire sees her portrait in a museum, what does it feel like to be dead but alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28066836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IzzyBells/pseuds/Anastasie%20Elise
Summary: Museum-goers noticed, some of them, and shrugged it off after only a moment.  How absurd would it be to imagine for more than a single moment that a woman living in 2018 was visiting her portrait painted in 1568?  Too absurd, certainly, for any sane person to consider.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: These Vampires Are Technically Antiques [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055990
Kudos: 1





	She Remembered

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this from a prompt i saw probably on pinterest, so the museum situation isn't my original idea. this is Marianne's origin story, though. written in 2018, my initial effort at making my own vampire lore

She sat on the bench opposite a small but beautiful portrait, done in the late Renaissance by a little-known but clearly talented painter. The cracking and sun-faded layers of oil paint showed a woman, all soft smile and gentle eyes and flowing hair, holding a cherubic infant close to her breast, naked except for a white drape around his chubby thighs. If one were to notice, and some others visiting the museum that day did notice, then one would see that the lines of the two noses were identical between the sitting woman and the painting, that the two sets of eyes were shaped identically, that the two mouths had identical cupid’s bows, that the long flowing locks in the painting were the same dark chestnut as that of the sitting woman’s, though her hair was cropped at the chin. With chocolate eyes full of gentle wistfulness, the woman sat on her bench and gazed at the painting, focusing for a moment on the woman, then lingering on the baby, then again flicking to the woman.

Museum-goers noticed, some of them, and shrugged it off after only a moment. How absurd would it be to imagine for more than a single moment that a woman living in 2018 was visiting her portrait painted in 1568? Too absurd, certainly, for any sane person to consider.

But the woman on the bench knew better. She stared and stared, drinking in the painting, memorizing every discernible brush stroke, every little detail painstakingly captured by the artist. The baby’s little pink lips curling outward and wet with drool, the wisps of golden hair adorning his round head, the round, hazel eyes in the middle of the change from blue to their later, lovely brown, the tiny slope of his sweet nose, all of these things she devoured. This was her son, long dead and far away. Here was the only surviving likeness of him as a child; she knew of one other portrait done of him as a grown man, but she preferred to see him small and innocent like this, when she still knew him. It helped her remember her youth, her joy, her passion for life and love and family.

Sitting on that bench, she remembered, as she looked into her own oil-rendered eyes, her little house in the countryside not too far from the town, the cows she kept, the butter she churned and the cheese she fermented, the smell of bread and woodsmoke, sacs of leavening and sugar and salt bought and wheels of cheese and bricks of butter and jugs of milk sold. She remembered how her husband smiled when he saw her sitting in the morning light by the window, and how his fingers were always black from digging chunks of charcoal out of the fireplace and drawing out her image on scraps of paper he left around the house. The loft upstairs was part bedchamber, part studio, and she remembered falling asleep with her head propped on her fist, lounging in their bed and watching him dab color onto a canvas by candlelight, the smell of mineral pigments and oil curling in her nose. Some nights, the expanse of her bare, milky skin became his canvas, and he dragged soft bristles loaded with cold paint across her back and stomach, making her into a picture of nothing in particular as he sought out every sensitive, ticklish spot with his brush; she remembered brushing off an acquaintance’s question about the blue and green and pink stains sweeping up from between her breasts to her collarbones, too. When she was pregnant, she remembered, her husband’s eyes lit up with such warm love as she had never before experienced whenever he looked at her, and after she had given birth to her little angel, she remembered, her husband wanted to show their son everything, from the cow pasture to the wheat fields to the threshing room to the dairy cellar to the town marketplace to the little creek running past the house. She remembered watching her little boy grow, kissing his soft little hands and his sweet little nose and his beautiful brown eyes at every chance she had, carrying him on her hip to sit and watch her milk the cows, showing him for the first time how to fold squares of paper into sailboats to float down the creek and wear on his head like a hat. Somewhere in the blur of years, she remembered sitting with her squirming infant son, only five months old, for her husband to copy their likeness, and she remembered sitting up at night, head propped on her fist, watching him dab color onto the canvas by candlelight.

She was 23 when she married him. He completed the portrait not more than two years later. He told her he painted every stroke with all the love in his heart, and that was why it turned out so beautiful. Not long after—though it could have been years, for her perception of time was broken by now—when her son was walking stuck to her leg and hiding his face in her skirt when they went into town, she lost everything. With the utmost clarity she recalled the attacks that took her happiness away from her, how the cold strangers set fire to the marketplace and the fields, looting the houses for money and jewelry. They stayed far from the church and its graves, but they killed everyone else they saw, committing disgusting acts of cannibalism in the streets. Her husband and son were in the town, and she had stayed behind at home to finish the laundry. They worked their way from the farms inward, and so came across her before her beloved boys, and she must have forgotten to pray for her soul and repent of her sins as they drained her body of blood and left her pocked with bite marks. 

She remembered burning throughout her whole body, burning in her limbs and her head and her heart and everywhere under her skin and surrounding her bones, everything engulfed in invisible, internal flame. She woke up dead, her heart still and her lungs stiff. She remembered sitting up and spying the flames licking through the fields of dried wheat, scrambling to her feet and sprinting outside to drive the cows out of the barn and set them loose, skirts gathered up around her thighs and bare toes digging into the parched earth as she ran. She remembered racing back to the house and tearing through the place, gathering scraps of paper and canvases, trying to rescue them all but only making it down the stairs and out the door with what she could carry. She remembered running, running, running and not stopping until she made it into the town, spinning around in the square and taking in the damage left in the cold strangers’ wake, running and running and running and running with the sketches and paintings clutched as securely and delicately as she could manage, reaching the next town over in a shockingly short amount of time, finding it, too, destroyed in the same manner as her own, and then she ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran faster than anyone had any right to. When she finally found somewhere far enough away to be safe, she was weak, dirty, and terrifyingly hungry. It broke her heart to sell her husband’s beautiful, beautiful work, but she needed the money to rent a room for the night. She remembered wanting to cry, struggling to sob, but her stiff lungs barely moved enough to let her speak, and her eyes could make no tears to shed.

Years, decades, centuries passed, and she was living in a world beyond anyone’s wildest fantasies, but she was living in it alone. When she located her husband and son, she could only come as close as the fence around their final resting place. She remembered drifting through all those years with only shallow human entertainment and other cold creatures for company. It only took one meeting with a cold man months after her death to understand that there was nothing cannibalistic, nothing wrong with devouring the flesh of a frail, warm-blooded human, and that she needed to feed to stay strong, but the thought of it still made her wish she could feel sick to her stomach. Instead, all she felt was hunger and want and satiation and satisfaction. It was a cursed mode of existence, and yet it would never end. All she could hope to do was remember, and never forget.


End file.
